Enoch Thompson

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (1872-1931) was the Treasurer of Atlantic County, New Jersey from 1912 to 1931, affiliated with the US Republican Party. Thompson had immense power in the city due to his control of the casinos and boardwalks, and he used this influence to become a major bootlegger during Prohibition, becoming the boss of a criminal empire. He was murdered in 1931.

Biography
Enoch Thompson was born in 1872 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the son of Irish immigrants Ethan and Elenore Thompson. He was abused by his alcoholic father, and Enoch and his younger brother Eli felt less-loved by their parents due to their parents' love for their sickly younger sister, Susan; Susan died of consumption in 1884. Thompson began to work in politics in the 1890s under Commodore Louis Kaestner, and he became a member of the US Republican Party. Thompson helped Kaestner in controlling Atlantic City's politics, and he served as Atlantic County sheriff from 1908 to 1912. When Governor Woodrow Wilson began to crack down on the machine politics of New Jersey, Kaestner agreed to go to prison and make Thompson the new County Treasurer in exchange for a large share of his profits. Thompson appointed his brother Eli as the new Sheriff, and the Thompson brothers became powerful members of the Atlantic City elite. Thompson was known for his lavish lifestyle, his enjoyment of parties and women, and his generosity towards his friends; he took in the young Jimmy Darmody, the illegitimate son of Kaestner, as his own son. Darmody would work as Thompson's chauffeur for years, but from 1917 to 1920 he served in the US Army, not returning until January 1920.

Prohibition
On 16 January 1920, Thompson held a meeting with Mayor Harry Bacharach, his brother, a recently-returned Jimmy Darmody, and several Atlantic City politicians at Babette's Supper Club to discuss business. They celebrated the end of Prohibition by opening several bottles of liquor and drinking, as did most of the people of the city. Thompson announced that Paddy Ryan would become the Chief Clerk of the Fourth Ward and that Darmody would become his assistant, and he told his colleagues that, while the rest of America would go "dry" (outlawing alcohol), Atlantic City would be "as wet as a mermaid's twat." They decided to begin an illegal importing scheme, and they would bring alcohol into the city to help the city prosper while the rest of the country lost its alcohol. Thompson formed connections with shipping captain Bill McCoy, Chicago mobsters James Colosimo and Johnny Torrio, New Jersey smugglers Mickey Doyle and Chalky White, and New York City bootleggers Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano, establishing himself at the head of a powerful organization. However, he had to deal with Darmody as he began to seek more independence from Thompson, and he had to deal from the gang wars that followed the start of Prohibition. He managed to defuse a war between the Chicago Outfit and Rothstein by blaming Al Capone and Darmody's attack on one of Rothstein's shipments on a drunken German immigrant named Hans Schroeder. Schroeder's wife Margaret had gone to Thompson in search of help after meeting him at a Women's Temperance League meeting, asking Thompson to get her husband a job so that they could take care of her soon-to-be-born baby. However, the drunkard Hans Schroeder beat Margaret so severely that the baby died, having discovered the money that Thompson gave her. Thompson had Eli kill Schroeder and dump him in the Atlantic Ocean, and the ambush was pinned on Schroeder. Nucky was a good mediator when it came to disputes, and he liked to avoid all-out conflict in favor of strict business.